


Look Both Ways

by ivyspinners



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene, Negotiations, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 16:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8997940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: Always meet allies with your eyes wide open. Leaving Yavin IV, Cassian and Jyn figure out where they stand.





	

Yavin IV falls away beneath them into a speck of light, then vanishes as they jump into hyperspace. Jyn doesn't watch. She tucks her blaster into place on the side of her thigh, its weight solid and reassuring. Repacks. Listens to Captain Cassian Andor and K-2SO murmuring flight instructions, Andor's round vowels and sharp consonants.

"We _could_ still leave her on the ship," K-2 suggests, with an emphasis Imperial droids shouldn't be capable of.

"And have her fly off without us?" Andor's reply is incredulous.

Jyn bites back a grim smile. He'd stood as straight as a soldier when receiving orders for this mission, but his mind is like hers, watching for the hidden trap in the dark. _He_ is like her. The Rebellion leaders promised freedom. Andor showed he understood what her meaning of freedom was.

 _Trust goes both ways_ , she had said, and he dropped his hand, left her with her blaster.

He intrigues her. She shouldn't let him.

But she cannot ignore him entirely. Andor will be her companion in a war zone; he'll dictate how often, _if_ , she can ever stop watching her back. When he abandons the co-pilot's seat for the floor, calmly checking each weapon's charge, she says, "What do you get out of it?"

His silhouette blocks out the lines of stars as he shifts to look at her. "Didn't we already tell you?"

"Not the Rebellion," Jyn says. "You."

"Knowing if the Empire can blow my planet apart." He sets one blaster down, reaches for the next. His answer is pragmatic, as though political ideology vanished with Yavin IV; the kind of practical that makes Jyn's belly ache a little less with dread. Its deftness is suspicious, and she watches for the tell that would give away the lie. "Seems important to me."

"Nothing you can do about it," she points out. "Either it's a wild chase through the desert for a weapon that doesn't exist, or you learn just enough to run. You lose either way."

Andor's mouth thins. He thrusts the blaster down. "Let the Alliance worry about that."

"I will," she tells him, eyes on the line of his chin.

He glances up at her, searching; she makes her face open, honest but not defiant. She meant what she said to his Rebellion's leaders. If she points out his mission's futility, it's out of self-preservation, not concern. If he wants to throw his life away, he'll do it with eyes open, and Jyn will let him. He is her captor. Her time would be wasted, worrying about him.

Jyn needs to get to Saw Gerrera and then get out, and if there's one thing she knows from growing up with Saw Gerrera, it's that a cause clings like drug-induced highs. It will bleed the life out of you eventually, while you curse and bless it in turn, and drag others into that same deathly haze.

Jyn has spent her life surviving. She understands what it means at its core.

"And your own planet? You'd give up and let the Empire turn your home into dust?" There, the tell. He has been thinking about something else altogether.

"I don't like the Empire any more than you do," Jyn says, "but my home is already dust."

Dust, ashes, and sea salt razing their family farm until nothing green would ever grow again. All these years later, her throat barely tightens; her grief is an echo of what it was, dulled by time, by life. Jyn has made a mistake, thinking of home at this vulnerable moment, how her Mama lay so still on the grass, how Papa's eyes searched the sweeping green horizon for a glimpse of her. It makes her want to look back; she cannot look back.

Andor watches her, his fingers slowing down, until they've stopped across his ion blaster. The back of her neck prickles, not from the harshness of his face, but the way his eyes soften.

"If we find Saw Gerrera, and he tells us where your father is, what will you do?" Andor asks.

He is the first to find the right question. His Alliance's leaders had watched her with cool eyes, had listened to Jyn say she pretends her father's dead, and they had not asked more.

"Nothing," she says, and Andor shakes his head.

"Honesty goes both ways too."

Her fingers dig into the fabric of her pack; with effort, she makes them loosen.

"I don't know," she says, "but I won't shoot him. Or your droid.."

" _Charming_ ," K-2 mutters, too clear to be ignored. She is grateful for the reminder of his presence.

Andor snaps the last weapon's power cell into place, rises. She tilts her chin up to watch his face. Her neck aches, but there's no point in asking what she will without looking for signs of a lie. "Honesty goes both ways. Are you planning to shoot when my back's turned?"

His lips quirk up into the ghost of a smile. It makes her belly tighten in a whole other way, makes the world seem sharper, more dangerously vivid.

"No," he says. "That would be pointless, and I already gave you my word."

Force help her, she believes him.

He does not shoot her; he shoots Saw Gerrera's man, endangers his mission, to _save_ her. He leaves his prison cell, and does not run from a world collapsing until her hand is in his, and they're stumbling out of Saw Gerrera's citadel. All this is true, but when it matters most, Andor -- Cassian -- does not believe her.


End file.
